Monday, November 11, 2013

Our 10th race of the season was held at Mazda Raceway Laguna
Seca. This is definitely one of my favorite tracks that the Continental Tire
series goes to. It feels more like a vacation than any other venue because of
how beautiful Monterey is. My birthday has fallen right before this race the
past two years. Both times we've headed out a little early to enjoy the area
and celebrate.

Before the race weekend started my family, my girlfriend, and I enjoyed walking
around Monterey and doing some exploring. We went to Fisherman's Wharf and ate
on the water. I always find it amusing watching the sea lions. Then, like last
year, we went to the aquarium, which is very cool.

Another thing I like about this race is that my girlfriend's family can attend.
They have some friends and family in the area so we had a lot of fun in the
down time during the race weekend entertaining them. A lot of fantastic dinners
were had. There was beautiful weather and great food. Can't go wrong.
The race weekend started on Friday for this one with our race being on Sunday.
Practice was a little delayed for us because we were changing an engine from
the past race. So we missed the first session. I never like giving up track
time, especially when I've only been to the track once and we need to get the
setup dialed in.

For this race I was the starting driver, back with co-driver Owen. So that
meant I was back to qualifying the car. Whoever starts the car, qualifies the
car. People say that Laguna is not a "Honda track," meaning that the
track might play more into some of the other car's strengths. I wanted to prove
them wrong. In qualifying, I was on the pole for a little bit, then dropped to
2nd. On the very last lap of qualifying I got bumped into 3rd by thousandths of
a second: same place I started last year.

At the start of the race the lane I was in didn't move as fast as the other so
I got shuffled back to 5th. I kept digging, watching those in front of me make
mistakes and try too hard. Before I knew it, I was in 2nd. I pitted in 2nd and
handed the car over to Owen. That's when our luck changed. We got a penalty for
pitting out of sequence nearly putting us a lap down. A wheel spacer got stuck
on a wheel during our pit stop so we had to come back in. Then we experienced
electrical problems, ultimately ending our race. It was a tough weekend.

Since we were out of the championship I was rooting for the #75 Compass 360 Honda
Civic of Ryan Eversley and Kyle Gimple, who sat in 2nd. After Laguna,there was a very close fight for the title! So going into Lime Rock, the season finale, anything
could happen and anyone could win it. We were hoping it would be a Honda, but more on that coming soon...
Our next blog will be from Lime Rock in Lakeville, CT.